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Last Updated on: 18th May 2025, 12:35 am
Volvo Cars is still leading the transition from fossil-powered cars to electric cars globally. In April, 11,697 fully electric Volvos were sold worldwide, accounting for about 20% of Volvo Cars sales. That’s an impressive percentage for a legacy automaker in 2025. Another 14,688 sales were plugin hybrids, or about 25% of Volvo Cars sales. So, let’s first give props where props are due and congratulate Volvo for being at 45% plugin vehicle share already.
That said, unfortunately, things turned in the wrong direction for Volvo Cars recently. Its full-electric car sales were down 32% compared to April 2024. That’s compared to a 5% sales drop for mild hybrids and an overall sales drop of 11%. (Plugin hybrid sales were up slightly, by 2%.)
Across the first four months of the year, full electric vehicle (BEV) sales were down 20%, mild hybrids were down 8%, and plugin hybrids were up 11%.
I was looking forward to Volvo Cars reaching 50% BEV share in the next year or three, and maybe 100% by 2030. So, it’s disappointing and a bit bewildering why Volvo BEV sales dropped so much. So, I turned to EV sales expert Jose Pontes for any insights he had on the April sales drop year over year.
“The EX30 is down, mainly in Europe, due to MiC tariffs,” Jose noted. That’s the “Made in China” tariffs that the European Union recently stuck on BEVs from China. Volvo is a popular brand in Europe, naturally, but if you jack up the price of something, demand is going to drop sharply. Volvo Cars, of course, is now owned by Geely, and much production occurs in China.
For the time being, Volvo may avoid the high BEV tariffs a bit by shifting to more plugin hybrid sales in Europe. (That’s productive, right?) However, in time, I expect Volvo to have solutions for the tariffs and to pick up positive BEV sales momentum again.
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